We started from the hotel today, a welcome change from climbing into the bus. While having the bus made it possible for us to cycle in many different areas of Portugal, we were also getting tired of bus rides. Plus, tomorrow we will be back on the bus one more time, to travel to Lisbon for 3.5 hours and by then we will really be tired of the bus.
Every morning, one of the tour guides, in this case Jorges, goes over the route with us. He will ride sweep while the other tour guide drives the van. They switch every day.
Yesterday, David told us that part of the route would be "sporty". Today, Jorges warned us about a couple of things that we needed to watch out for. One was a railroad track crossing. Another was crossing a busy highway. There were a couple of "tricky turns". Ride with GPS also provided us with all of this information.
One thing we were not prepared for was a water crossing. Ride with GPS told us to cross a river bed. She didn't say there would be water in it. This is what it looked like.
It was maybe six inches deep and the water ran across a concrete surface so it was ultimately not very difficult. But when I saw it, I stopped right about where you can see the road coming in from the right. Mike and Stu were behind and they stopped too. Walter came in pretty fast, he locked his rear wheel and skidded into the shoulder.
Here's the damage.
Turns out he had a couple of scrapes on his shoulder under the jersey. We'll see if it bothers him at night.
Fortunately, the VBT van was not far behind. David was planning to set up on the right of this picture anyway so he maneuvered the van into position and we cleaned up Walter's abrasions, patched him up and we were on our way.
The half-way point was Cacela a Velha. It is a seaside town on the Atlantic and it was low tide so there was a long expanse of sand and boats stranded on dunes. It was a long walk down to the beach and that meant walking back up so we skipped it.
But here's proof we were there.
Did you know that Portugal has no coastline on the Mediterranean? Gibralter is at the mouth of the Mediterranean and it is part of Spain.
The town has a church, a couple of restaurants and walls.
I am not sure the significance of this but I thought it was pretty funny.
As you can see, cobbles are everywhere. The grounds of the hotel, including the driveway where we started our ride were covered with cobblestone. There were stretches of the routes everyday that were cobbled. Why anyone would voluntarily ride on cobbles is beyond comprehension. But the races in the spring season, called "classics", are one day races on cobbles. Paris-Roubaix is the most well-known. Plus, since they are in the spring, they are usually cold and wet. And to add to the fun, they are usually covered with animal waste. Yum.
Here is a creative application of cobbles. Why paint lines for parking spots when colored cobbles last longer? And no, the parking spaces are not super-wide - this guy just didn't stay between the lines. Maybe colored cobbles don't work that well?
On the way back, Walter needed to get to an ATM to get some euros. The guides gave us directions and a google map to Tavira, a town about halfway back to the finish. It was only a slight detour off the route. As we were reviewing the directions, I noticed a bike shop and David said they probably didn't have what we were looking for.
As we rode slowly through the town (cobbles, remember?), we passed the bike shop, expecting that it would be a disappointment. I stopped and told Mike and Stu that I was just going to take a quick look around. It turns out that they had a full supply of bikes for sale, for rent, parts and accessories, and most importantly, jerseys. They even had a bargain box for 5 euro. I would have grabbed more shimano cleats if I had more pockets. Even so, I looked like a domestique.
Mike and Stu bought bright orange jerseys with Portugal across the front. Stu also bought bibs so he has the full kit. I went with the shop jersey, black with green trim to go with the other high-vis gear I have at home.
We continued into town and found a nice little cafe where we could watch the town pass by. Mike has always said that this is the quintessential activity for a bike trip to europe.
Here we are "pounding cokes".
When we crossed the river to the coffee shop, I saw this guy digging in the mud. I'm not sure what he was looking for but he was the only guy out there. I'm not sure what that means.
The route went through some very productive farmland. Previously we had seen groves of olive trees and at least one almond tree farm. In this area, citrus was everywhere. We passed one farm growing lemons and you can't really get a sense of how big these are without a hand next to them but they were the size of grapefruit.
In fact, on the grounds of our hotel, there were orange trees right outside our door. They were indeed "low-hanging fruit".
Walter described the taste as: "imagine the best orange you have ever tasted and it's 10% better." The orange juice at breakfast was pretty good - I wonder if they grow enough of them for consumption in the restaurant or are these just for guests?
Another amazing thing about this hotel: there are staff everywhere. I peeled the orange outside, dropped the peel pieces at my feet and spit the seeds into the garden. When I was done, I picked up the peels and started to head back into my room to throw them in the trash. Before I could get to the door, a woman who works for housekeeping approached me with a plastic bag. Walter described this as attentive. Another incident occurred yesterday when Walter and I switched rooms. I was in the original room, trying not to mess it up because then housekeeping would have to re-clean the room. One of the housekeeping ladies came in to let me know that the new room was ready. I got my stuff back in my suitcases and she started moving Walter's stuff across the courtyard. I tried to tell her that this was not necessary - we could do this, but she moved most of our stuff before I could get one piece re-packed and moved. To me, this says more about their guests than it does the customer service. As a high-end luxury hotel (200+ euros per night), I think their guests expect to be waited on hand-and-foot so they gear their customer service accordingly.
Here's the entrance.
It was the longest ride of the week (about 20 miles out and 20 miles back) but not particularly hilly. Even so, we had about 2000' of climbing. But yesterday's ride was much more challenging.
Here's the afternoon ride on Ride with GPS: https://ridewithgps.com/trips/23913282
Here's the link to the ride on strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/1616746804
We spent most of the afternoon taking our gear off the bikes and packing it away. We also had to begin to pack for the trip home.
Here is the trailer with all the bikes repacked.
We have a "farewell dinner" on the last night and everyone gets a little dressed up. Here are our guides with some final comments to the whole group.
I haven't posted many pictures of food but tonight's dinner involved a seafood stew that came in a cast iron pot.
And it looked like this. This was a pot for two so we served it family-style.
It was delicious but it did have cilantro in it.
Cilantro seems to be the national herb of Portugal. I hate cilantro. I am one of those people for whom cilantro tastes like soap. When I found out there was a bio-chemical reason for this, I was relieved to know I was not insane. That made eating in Portugal a challenge. Cilantro was everywhere. And that's on top of trying to be vegan. Or vegetarian. Or eat whatever was around.
I wrote a bit about the dinner we had a few days ago at the Brazilian grill. It was largely thanks to the fact that we had our guides with us that we were able to get the kitchen to make me something without cilantro. I am sure they thought I was either crazy or a difficult american tourist (true, I suppose). They substituted pennyroyal for the cilantro. I thought I remember reading once that pennyroyal was poisonous? I'm not dead yet.
Sometime during the evening, we slip them envelopes. It is customary to tip the guides, and the VBT materials suggest $10-20 per day per person per guide. There are usually 20 people on each tour. You do the math. It is not bad for a week's work plus salary. They also work their asses off.
Love the jersey choice!
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